Talk:When a white horse is not a horse

Difficulties in Interpretation

The revision of 4 September 2009 by Bryan12603 should be undone. To ascribe "Platonistic interpretation" to Bodde/Fung's quote is an unsupported value judgment of the quote. As well, his summary comment "contemporary scholars universally reject this interpretation" begs for a proof that such is the case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ShaziDaoren (talk • contribs) 08:18, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

The hell is up with that horse picture?

Why is there a picture of a horse supposedly suffering an identity crisis. What does that even have to do with this article?69.205.95.94 (talk) 08:20, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, for starters, 1) it is a horse with a white hair coat, so it's a fun way to illustrate the article, and what else could be used for an illustration anyhow? (smile) Now technically, it's not a "white horse" -- the animal is actually a fully-silvered out gray, but consensus went against me about inserting the image of a true white horse, because none of them looked sad enough! LOL! And if a white horse is not a horse, then the poor white horse (who isn't even really white) must wonder if he is a horse or not, which, if we anthropomorphize enough and place tongue firmly in cheek, means that he IS having an identity crisis! So, 2) This particular horse looks rather upset about something (Technically it's because he is overflexed in too severe a bit, but I digress...) & so illustrates the angst of the white horse upon contemplating the circumstances under which he may not actually be a horse! Montanabw^(talk) 20:24, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

That illustration made me LMAO, but is hardly encyclopædic. Still, I don’t have the heart to remove it. —Wiki Wikardo 17:16, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

It's hardly unencyclopedic either. It's not like encyclopedia authors never insert a sardonic comment or dry expression. Diderot didn't, nor even are dictionaries humor-free zones. (Consider Johnson's definition of 'lexicographer'.) --Gwern (contribs) 17:49 8 June 2010 (GMT)

+1 for LMAO on horse picture, too cruel humor. chughtai (talk) 12:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with the picture, but the caption entirely misses the point without being funny, sardonic or even dry. NRGized (talk) 12:59, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Merge

I don't think a merge is appropriate. The White Horse argument is a specific and important logical argument/prose fragment, and it's not at all the same thing as a general article on arguments involving horses, if you see what I mean. --Gwern (contribs) 21:08 5 December 2006 (GMT)

I agree with Gwern. A merge is not appropriate.

This article talks about the deferences between definitions and sets.

The other article talks about an invalid argument involving mathematical induction.

Neither article is a list of paradoxes involving horses. --Kevinkor2 08:53, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, a merge is inappropriate as the two paradoxes have nothing to do with each other other than nominally involving horses. I've removed the merge tag. Rigadoun (talk) 21:03, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The white horse/gray horse thing

It's been pointed out to me that the horse in the picture with the caption is not what we would today call a white horse; it is actually a gray horse. Gray horses have white hair but appear darker in areas because they have dark underlying skin. I knew this when I first came here, actually, since I first found this article only after reading various pages about horses. And the changes I made to the caption were just intended to make it more humorous. Looking back at the history of the article, it seems that the pics were shuffled around a bit early on before the current one (the depressed-looking horse) was settled on. Reading the text of the article seems to suggest that the sense of white horse intended by the Chinese philosophers was based on color only and would not make the fine white/gray distinction. I still am linking to the white horse article, but to the section where "false" white horses are mentioned. I hope that this is OK with everybody. Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 00:14, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I was the person who swapped out the photo for that of a "real" white horse, but if the photo of the gray reflects consensus, it's not a moral issue, and mea culpa for upsetting the apple cart, so to speak. It's just a real pet peeve of horse people that gray horses are called "white." (Gray horses are born a dark color and their hair coat gradually turns white as they age, but their skin stays dark) The ancient Chinese probably knew the difference between white and gray horses too, (true white being extremely rare, grayed out horses with white hair coats relatively common) but they may not have reflected this in the context of this particular paradox. Or cared. And the use of the photo IS funny! Being that he is a gray horse, he is not a white horse, thus is he a horse because he is not truly white?? Montanabw^(talk) 03:27, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Sets and properties

It seems that what is being asserted here is that the set of white horses is not equivalent to the set of horses; or equally, the property of Being A White Horse is not the same as the property of Being A Horse. This has nothing to do with whether a white horse is a horse, but rather whether white-horseness is the same as horseness. Am I missing the point here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.146.7.39 (talk) 08:45, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Can someone translate this dialog to English, please?

Can anyone make this text understandable, even though the text is already in English, please? I'm not following the conversation at all. What the hell is that other guy talking about? Of course a white horse is a horse. His main argument seems to be that the color white is not a horse, which even though it's quite obvious is such a weird position since it's totally irrelevant for the discussion. And why does the objector start to talk about that "If there are white horses, one cannot say that there are no horses"? How does this help him at all? Why should this be more obvious than the already obvious and very straightforward statement that "a white horse is a horse"? And then the other guy says that a horse extends to a yellow or a black horse. Okay, so you're saying that yellow horses and black horses are horses, but that white horses aren't? And then he continues with saying that a white horse doesn't extend to a yellow or a black horse and uses that as an argument, since a horse does. After that, he continuously seems to mix up the two expressions "horse" and "white horse", and struggles to separate their meanings. Dude! I think you need to study some set theory. Just because a white horse is a horse, it doesn't mean that all horses are white horses! "Horse" is a less specified expression than "white horse", and therefore it can include more things, which "white horse" doesn't have to include, okay? Was that understandable for you? —Kri (talk) 21:39, 18 August 2012 (UTC) , This is explained in the section directly below the translation. Was that understandable for you? --M-O-W (talk) 10:45, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

It comes across to me as pure sophistry, not a paradox at all. Socrates wrote about a similar piece of sophistry: "this dog is mine this dog is a mother, therefore this dog is my mother". And he disapproved of such sophistry. I wonder how the white horse "paradox" has been regarded by Chinese intellectuals. Maproom (talk)

06:24, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, lost in translation...Simply put -

Black horse is a horse, white horse is not black, therefore not a horse Perhaps something like that should be added to the interpretation with regards to it's actual meaning as direct transaltion seldom works (subtitles are often changed for local/national expression)

Title

The title of this should really be capitalized. Makes it look much more professional, for an article that can easily be taken as a joke. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.246.112.51 (talk) 14:27, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Just some funny fact

Some lawyer said Windows XP SP3 is not Windows XP in a lawsuit in china. --125.39.117.43 (talk) 13:42, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Mistranslated title

In Classical Chinese grammar, an "A非B" construction like "白馬非馬" is a declarative sentence "A white horse is not a horse" and not a conditional sentence "When a white horse is not a horse". Whither when in the current title? This mistake, which began in the 20 June 2005 first version, might derive from the reference

• Thompson, Kirill Ole. 1995. "When a 'White Horse' Is Not a 'Horse'", Philosophy East and West 45.4:481-499.

Shouldn't we move this page to A White Horse is Not a Horse? Keahapana (talk) 00:26, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Agree . Dropping the "when" seems more accurate to the original sense of the paradox. Mateussf (talk) 13:39, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

If it were a misnomer...

...it would be plainly true – a white ant isn't an ant at all. --RacerX¹¹ Talk to me^{Stalk me} 02:28, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

White Horse Discourse

Hi,

Please be aware that there is an online discussion regarding classical Chinese that may impact this page. I suggest you read the discussion to the end.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/52454-the-duality-code/

W. K. Choy (talk) 11:41, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

No impact whatsoever. Please read Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 12:41, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

More cleanup needed: citation formatting, language markup

I've normalized to a single citation style per WP:CITEVAR, and fixed a boatload of WP:MOS compliance issues, as well as copyedited this whole article to actually make sense in English. It still needs the following:

• Either use a single "References" section, or split sections for short citations and full bibliographic information below that. Right now, it's trying to do both at once, with redundant full citations in both sections, and this is against WP:CITE.
• Another CITE problem is mixing templated and non-templated citations; absent a very good reason not to, this article should use WP:CS1 citations like about 99% of our articles.
• All the non-English material needs to be marked up with {{lang|zh}} for Chinese characters and or {{lang|zh-Latn}} for transliterations, per MOS:FOREIGN.

I don't have time to do this, and have little actual interest in the article, so someone else please pick up where I left off.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:41, 20 February 2019 (UTC)